We next drove to the little (blink and you'll miss it) town of Goodland to stop for lunch. An app Todd looked at said there was a good local restaurant there called On the Bricks, so that was our destination.
We pulled off at the Goodland exit and passed the town's one-and-only (I guess) tourist attraction - a giant reproduction of one of Vincent van Gogh's sunflower paintings. Who knew?
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| Van G(r)oh |
Then as we drove down the ancient main street we noticed that the town was empty - the whole place seemed deserted except for this sketchy looking pizza place that was overflowing with cars in the parking lot. Other than some people we saw heading in, we didn't see anyone else walking or in cars as we drove through town. It was very Walking Dead-ish. What, I wondered, do these people do for a living? Count how much "flat" there is in "prairie"? Manufacture decrepitude?
We drove down the main street and found On the Bricks - found that it was closed, that is. Drat. There didn't seem to be any other restaurants in town so, being hungry, we backtracked to the sketchy pizza place, but there were no parking spaces left. Now hungry
and disappointed, we decided to just get back on the highway and go to the next little town and see what was there.
On the way out of town we pulled into the little gravel parking lot for the giant painting. I changed into my sandals to get a little scraping in while I walked around. There was an awning with a computer kiosk under it, but we pushed the button and it wouldn't work.
I walked around, taking pictures and dragging my feet through the grass.
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| Out in the middle... |
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| ...of nowhere |
On the way back to the car I saw there was an old fashioned hand-pump off to the side of the parking area with a homemade sign that said it was free water for visitors. Ah-hah! I pumped and thoroughly washed off the bottom of my sandal before drying it on the grass. I got back in the car and as we backed out of the parking lot, we saw the info kiosk come on. We didn't go back.
We got back on the highway and found out that if we had just exited at the next exit 1/2 mile down the road we would have come to the more modern part of town with all the chain restaurants, Walmart, etc. D'oh! So we took the exit. On one side of the road was a McDonald's, a Sonic and a Subway, and on the other side was a Dairy Queen, a Taco John's and an El Reynaldo's, whatever that is.
We first went to McDonald's, but it was too crowded, as was Sonic. Everyone in town must have come to this area for lunch. Dairy Queen also looked crowded, and there was no way we were going to try mystery Mexican food while we were still on the road. That left Subway.
We parked and went inside, and found it was packed, which is to say it was equally full of people and flies. Fuck it, we decided, we're hungry. The workers must have grown accustomed to it since they covered each order with a piece of paper to keep the flies off as it made it's way down the assembly line. At least there was that.
I ordered a turkey bacon avocado on wheat, and after getting our food and a table I went to the bathroom to wash my hands. In the bathroom either someone had been washing a pig in the sink or it had been dirty for a long, long time. Sigh.
We ate our food and left, and crossed over into Colorado at 1:30pm since we had gained an hour due to the time zone change.
We made it to Denver and arrived at the Sheraton downtown at about 5:00pm.
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| OMG, mountains! |
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| Downtown Denver |
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| The Sheraton |
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| The lobby was busy |
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| Chandelier |
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| Room with a view |
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| The facilities |
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| The view. Can you find the pencil? |
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| There it is! |
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| Whew, we made it! |
We checked in and got settled, then walked across the street to Noodles & Company for dinner. I had spaghetti and meatballs, a garden salad and a Rice Krispie treat. The theme song from Borderlands 2 was playing in the background.
After dinner we walked down to the UA theater to see the 7:20 showing of Guardians of the Galaxy in 3D. It was a great movie, but I was too tired to enjoy it fully. We'd see it again after we got home.
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| The downtown mall area view from the movie theater |
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| Night view |
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